Quotes from Orson Scott Card

Human beings may be miserable specimens, in the main, but we can learn, and, through learning, become decent people.

I have lived in the only decades I could have lived in, and hope to live through at least a few more.

I don't believe that there are aliens. I believe there are really different people.

There's a reason why every human society has fiction. It teaches us how to be 'good', to behave in a way that is for the benefit of the whole community.

But in the meantime I became accustomed to the writing life and it would be hard to change now - partly because of the salary cut if I went to my other love, teaching; and partly because I still have stories to tell, even though it isn't all that fun doing the work anymore.

The world was full of locked doors, and he had to get his hand on every key.

He spent the afternoon alone in the streets.

No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing.

There is no society that does not highly value fictional storytelling. Ever.

Apparently the Dutch now prided themselves on being better at queues than the English, which was absurd, because standing cheerfully in line was the English national sport.

All is going well, very well, I couldn't ask for anything better— So why do I hate my life?

I wonder sometimes if the motivation for writers ought to be contempt, not admiration.

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations. But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war.

It is a weak man who blames his failures on the strength of others.

This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question.

Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender.

It's the teachers, they're the enemy. They get us to fight each other, to hate each other.

His vices were the vices of his time and culture, but his virtues transcended the milieu of his life.

If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side.

You spend your whole life grieving for those who haven't died yet.

As he thought of it, though, he could not imagine what "just living" might actually be. He had never done it in his life. But he wanted to do it anyway.

Your dream is a good one. [. . .] The desire that is the very root of life itself: To grow until all the space you can see is part of you, under your control. It's the desire for greatness.

I've learned much, Father, and this above all: that no station in life is above any other, if it's occupied by someone with a good heart.

We don't admit it to ourselves, not until the very moment of death, but in that moment, we see all life before us and we understand how we chose, every day of our lives, the manner of our death.